Planck is a space observatory of the European Space Agency (ESA) and designed to observe the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) over the entire sky, at a high sensitivity and angular resolution.

On 21 March 2013, the European-led research team behind the Planck cosmology probe released the mission's first all-sky map of the cosmic microwave background. The map suggests the universe is slightly older than thought. According to the map, subtle fluctuations in temperature were imprinted on the deep sky when the cosmos was about 370,000 years old. The imprint reflects ripples that arose as early, in the existence of the universe, as the first nonillionth (10-30) of a second. Apparently, these ripples gave rise to the present vast cosmic web of galaxy clusters and dark matter. The team estimates the universe to be 13.798 ± 0.037 billion years old, containing 4.9% ordinary matter, 26.8% dark matter and 68.3% dark energy.[16] Also, the Hubble constant was measured to be 67.15 ± 1.2 (km/s)/Mpc.